


Sweet, Sweet Ramen

by ImperfectOrphanage



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 14:40:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15026855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperfectOrphanage/pseuds/ImperfectOrphanage
Summary: Neku tells Joshua his ramen is terrible and so he goes to the only person who could teach him how to cook: Beat.---This fic is due to a Discord conversation in the TWEWY group I'm in. I hate all of you. (I love you guys unconditionally.)Thank you especially to Ven, who let me borrow the feel line.





	Sweet, Sweet Ramen

Joshua wasn’t quite sure he was at the right address. He looked at the slip of paper, back to the number on the door of the block of apartments, and back to the note. Ringing the doorbell would solve the mystery but he was still far too nervous to go through with this. Neku had told him if he wanted to learn to cook he should talk to Beat, but he hadn’t officially been alone with the now eighteen-year-old since the Game all those years ago.

Closing his eyes, Joshua knocked tentatively on the door and waited.

The sound of an elephant stampeding down the stairs and down the hall was followed by the door flying open so hard it was a miracle it hadn’t torn off the hinges.

“Aight! Ya made it!”

Beat was larger than he had been at the cute age of fifteen. Instead of a small remainder of baby fat on his face and arms, he had full muscle to his frame and a few stray hairs from a recently trimmed beard. Joshua found his fingers moving before he could process it, and he pulled one of the hairs free.

“Yeeouch! Warn a man next time, J.”

“Do not call me J. I am Joshua.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beat waved it off and tugged Joshua by the arm into the modest two-story apartment. It was decorated with flowers and photographs of the Bito family at varying ages. Joshua kept staring at the many pictures as he was led down the hall and to the galley kitchen. The apartment was more of a house though it was one of a series of twelve. Each home was a mirror copy of the next, and Joshua only knew because he had researched ahead of time.

Not that he was nervous. No.

“C’mon, J,” the overly large homo-sapien said, “meet mah Mom and Dad.”

He saw the pair at the nearby kitchen table enjoying a cup of coffee while Rhyme sat nearby in the floor of the main living room. She was playing with a cat, but in front of her was a series of complicated arrangements and formulas. Joshua was not one for math, and before his head began to spin he bowed politely and introduced himself.

“Joshua Kiryu, Mr. and Mrs. Bito. I am honored to have your son teach me to cook.”

“Man, you ain’t gotta be dat formal, yo. You’re in mah house.”

The two smiled and nodded to each other before giving a short ‘nice to meet you’ and disappearing up the stairs to who knew where. Rhyme immediately hopped up and gathered her assignments.

“I’ve got a video meeting with my tutor in about ten so I’ll see you later!”

Joshua started to say something, anything, but all that came out was a squeak.

“You ain’t gotta be nervous. I ain’t bitin’ today. C’mon, show me what ya got.”

Oh, right. He had brought a clipping for a ramen recipe he wasn’t sure how to complete. Each time he attempted it, Neku labeled the bowls with a number and fail. He was up to twenty-two failures and it didn’t sit right with the Composer. Joshua was creativity in form and to not be able to cook was a crime against humanity and Shibuya.

“W-well, it isn’t much,” he stammered, surprised at the action. “Forgive me, I haven’t seen you properly in quite some time and-“

Beat threw an apron at his face. At his FACE.

“Suit up or git out. Welcome to Beat’s Kitchen,” he decried and punched his hands together. “First things first, J. Do we got the ingredients we need?”

A lump was forming in Joshua’s throat and he shook his head. “I am not sure.”

The recipe was snatched away and Beat turned it this way and that as if it were in a foreign language. He crumpled it up, tossed it in the trash, and put a foot down in front of Joshua when he tried to rescue the paper.

“J, y’can’t make ramen from a recipe. Y’gotta FEEL IT. Feel the ramen. Be the ramen.”

Each sentence was marked with another punch of one hand into the other. Joshua felt a giggle coming on but he swallowed it back down into his rolling stomach. This was a mistake. He should leave.

He should _run_.

Beat didn’t seem to notice the internal struggle of his student and was busy picking out certain spices and herbs to make the dish great. There were several Joshua knew of, and several more he had never heard of in Japan. Beat had imported spices from everywhere, and from the look of the bottles they were used frequently. How much ramen could one man eat? Or was he cooking for the family? Neku had told Joshua that the blundering fool-Joshua’s words, not Neku’s-was close to getting an internship at a fancy restaurant in town. Sanae owned the restaurant, and Joshua was certain the man was being nice to the kid who’s sister was once soul in Sanae’s fingers.

No. No, this wasn’t Sanae’s doing. Beat was a chef.

Suddenly finding himself caught between the counter and a wall of beef, Joshua shivered slightly. Beat was behind him but had his arms on either side of the Composer while looking at spices and saying something…something to Joshua…say something…say something you idiot!

“Oh! I’m not sure,” Joshua managed to squeak out. “I mean, I came to learn. I have not the foggiest idea or notion on what to do. I can make American cuisine quite well, but ramen…”

“Ramen is an experience. You ain’t gettin’ an experience from a hot dog.”

“How _dare_ you.”

“Huh?”

Joshua bit his lip. “Nothing.”

“I coulda swore y’said somethin’ but Ma says I don’t always hear well.” Beat singled out a few spices and a couple herbs before explaining-in detail-what each one was for, how it was prepared, and how to use it in dishes. He even knew the scientific names and often called them by it unawares.

Joshua had always taken Beat for a simpleton but perhaps he just hadn’t found his niche yet. There was something about him that-

Oh. Oh, God. There was something in Joshua’s back.

“Aw, shit, I forgot about my beater.”

“Your _what_?”

Beat held out the whisk and set it on the counter. “I was bakin’ earlier an’ must’ve forgot to put it back. My bad, yo.”

He was going to die. Joshua, high Composer of Shibuya, was going to die.

“Aight. We need some noodles an’ some celery…”

Joshua slid to the corner of the cabinets to keep his back protected as Beat wandered off to start a pot of broth. He continued to talk amicably about how it should be prepared in a big kitchen, but that without those tools this would have to do. Joshua could smell the thick beef in the broth and he inhaled slowly as the spices and herbs were mixed in.

“C’mon, mix in the cumin,” Beat ordered.

Joshua read the package and began to shake it vigorously over the pot. His hand was caught and he was told forcefully you had to _coax_ the seasons in, not beat the hell out of them. Instead of arguing or trying to take his hand back, Joshua let the man gently tap the seasoning in. It felt strangely warm to have someone hold his hand in such an educational fashion.

Educational.

“Okay,” Beat’s voice had gone a bit soft on the edges, “now set it down and grab the spoon.”

Doing as commanded, Joshua began slowly stirring the broth. He scraped the sides of the pot and the bottom in order to make sure each spice mixed and did not clump. The lunkhead beside him seemed to enjoy the movement, and he praised Joshua’s skill.

“I am stirring a pot. It does not take skill.”

“Hell it does,” Beat said enthusiastically. “Y’gotta have skill to do anythin’. When you was a baby you didn’t know how to turn a spoon. It’s a skill.”

Well, when put that way…

“Alright, the broth is stirring. What next, oh, tutor?”

Beat snorted. “Y’ain’t gotta be all snooty to me. Call me Beat. Aight, J?”

“Aight.”

The man laughed again, and Joshua was reminded of a blaring horn. “Y’can’t speak like that. Not with a sissy voice. Y’gotta bring it down. Lower. Here.”

A fist gently beat at Joshua’s rib cage. He tried to lower his voice but it failed.

“Man, there’s just some things a person shouldn’t do.” Beat nudged Joshua to the side and began to tell him what to grab and from where. There were vegetables to chop, meat to slice and sear into perfect pork cutlets, and several little additions like those tiny, swirly fish cakes. Joshua would never have put half of the things in the pot, but the smell was as if heaven had opened to him a new world.

It took minimal time to prepare-or at least, it felt as such-and soon they were sitting in front of a bowl of ramen so thick and so pure it was glowing.

Oh, wait, no…that was Joshua. Tune it down…tune it down…

“Aight. Close your eyes,” Beat said, voice suddenly professional. “Open your mouth.”

Joshua slowly parted his lips. The spoon entered, dropped a bite of God’s blessing on his tongue, and retreated. Oh, _oh_ , this was what he had missed. This flavor. That fragrance. Those vegetables with those meats and spices…

“You did it,” Joshua whispered.

“Nah, man,” Beat put his arm around Joshua’s shoulders, “ _we_ did it, bruh.”

“Are you ever going to clean up your vocal patterns?”

Taking a seat to the right of Joshua, Beat smiled lazily and said-with perfect pronunciation, “why? Do you think I sound funny or something, Joshua?”

He hiccupped.

“Rhyme tells me I should go into voice acting.” Beat’s words were fluid as a song and warm like the honey of those flowers Joshua used to eat as a child. “But I ain’t doin’ no sissy roles.”

There it was. Thank God.

“Y’aight? Your face is, ah, red. Aw, shit, are you allergic to a spice? Aw, man, I shoulda asked before tossin’ in the special shit. Lemme get ya water-“

Joshua caught the man’s wrist in his hand and two things came to him. First, his hand barely wrapped around the thick wrist and second, he wanted the boy to stay. He was enjoying the company of the one he had written off as a lost cause all those years ago. Had it been Joshua’s decision, he would have kept Rhyme as a Noise and left Beat to be reborn. There was no reason to bring any of them back but Neku…his precious friend…had been worth a few lashes at the hands of the heavenly host.

“I did not want you,” Joshua said.

Beat tilted his head. “Huh?”

“I did not want you,” he paused, collected his emotions, and continued, “to leave. Please sit. We have so much to catch up on.”

“Heh. Yeah. Neku said you’s a strange one.”

He turned his liquid violet gaze up to Beat. “I am.”

“Good,” Beat sat back down, “I always thought you were a girl, man.”

Joshua choked on his next bite of ramen.


End file.
